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Kaitlyn Houseman

As the Marketing Specialist at GroupOne Health Source, Kaitlyn leverages the company's experience in revenue cycle management and healthcare IT to bring readers expert advice on all things healthcare practice management. Since joining the sales and marketing division at GroupOne, Kaitlyn has been able to identify the top concerns of healthcare professionals and develop content that provides answers and insights into healthcare policy, patient pay strategies, EHR optimization, and medical coding and billing.

Author's Posts

Data breaches are on the rise and healthcare is not immune, says Michelle Caswell, JD, Senior Director of Legal and Compliance for Clearwater Compliance LLC. Healthcare organizations hear about the vulnerability of protected health information, but don't do much more than hope that they won't be the next target.

With Halloween just around the corner, you surely have seen the various blog posts with Halloween ICD-10 codes. Since ICD-10 go live was this year, we decided to take it to another level. We thought we'd pair a few spooky codes with a costume. On the off chance you still haven't decided what you'll dress up as this year, feel free to snatch up one from this list of the top 5 ICD-10 codes with costumes.

With children back in school and people spending more time indoors, it's only a matter of time before flu cases start showing up in your practice. Of course, your best coping mechanism is doing what you can to prevent flu transmission in the first place rather than having to go into reactive mode after an influx of cases. For most practices, this means developing a plan to get patients vaccinated, but you need to define your plans in greater detail.

A dozen electronic health record vendors have agreed to adopt a set of metrics and engage in ongoing reporting to help gauge the U.S. health care system's progress toward achieving interoperability, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 10/19).

While the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a year's grace period this summer when it comes to claims coded with ICD-10, not all large commercial payers are following suit.

According to the CMS announcement, during the 12 months immediately following the October 1, 2015, date, “Medicare review contractors will not deny physician or other practitioner claims billed under the Part B physician fee schedule through either automated medical review or complex medical record review based solely on the specificity of the ICD-10 diagnosis code as long as the physician/practitioner used a valid code from the right family.”

Have you ever felt discouraged or uninspired? Maybe you feel overwhelmed with the small amount of time you have to learn about new advances in science and technology. If you don't have much time these days to explore new ideas in the health care, science, and technology fields then you're in for a real treat.

We've rounded up 15 TED talks surrounding some of the most remarkable ideas behind the advances in science and how they're shaping health care. Each TED talk is under 30 minutes so you can favorite them and listen later using the TED app. They're great for some quick inspiration and learning during lunch, on your way home or even when trying to squeeze in some cardio at the gym.

Did we miss one that you've found inspiring? Let us know in the comments below.

Unfortunately, every medical practice has some of "those" patients: ones who are rude, disrespectful, noncompliant, or who behave inappropriately. Difficult patient encounters are made of three elements: the situation, the patient, and the physician.

Situational componentsmay include language barriers, the presence of multiple people in the exam room, or having to break bad news to a patient. Difficult patients may be angry, defensive, frightened, grieving, or manipulative. And though it can be hard to admit, physicians play a role in difficult patient encounters too, by behaving defensively or arrogantly, for example. Having a plan for coping with difficult patients is important. Following are 6 steps you can take to improve difficult patient encounters.

In the United States, flu outbreaks can start in October and last until May. The official "flu season" arrives when certain key indicators rise and remain elevated for several weeks. Though it varies from year to year, flu activity in the USusually peaks from December to February.

By preparing both your practice and your patients for flu season, you can keep your practice running efficiently and make sure your medical billing stays on track, even if you experience a large influx of patients during flu season. Here are 7 tips to help your practice with flu season.

The process of medical transcription is how the files representing patient histories, diagnoses and treatments are built. To perhaps oversimplify, healthcare practitioners dictate the particulars of their interaction with patients and medical transcriptionists may transcribe the oral dictation or edit reports that are generated by speech recognition software.

Despite the fact that more Americans have health insurance, many still struggle to pay their medical bills due to the increasing number of high deductible health plans. Collecting from self-pay patients can be also be costly for a medical practice since it typically takes more time and hassle.

With ICD-10 just 3 days away, healthcare providers and practices should be gearing up for the biggest change in healthcare to occur in decades. However, there seems to be a lot of debate and confusion surrounding the CMS announcement of a “grace period” with ICD-10. If you haven’t yet heard of the “grace period” it is intended to alleviate some of the concern surrounding the additional time physicians will need to spend on documenting with the new ICD-10 code set.

The first retail medical clinics started opening about 15 years ago, and by the end of 2015, there will be an estimated 2,800 of them in the United States. The largest chain of retail clinics is CVS's Minute Clinic chain, with over 800 locations in CVS pharmacies. By the end of 2013, more than one-third of medical patients had visited a retail clinic at some time.

The change from the ICD-9 coding standard to ICD-10 will affect healthcare provider cash flow from several different angles. In fact, you could do everything "right" in the lead-up to ICD-10 and still face problems with revenue cycle management. But knowing where and how ICD-10 will make an impact can help you prepare and do your best to minimize problems.

Paper superbills have been as much a part of many medical practices as stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs over the past few decades. And despite increasing prevalence of electronic health records (EHRs), more than half of physician practices today still use paper superbills. That's because they're flexible and powerful and do their job well.